Saigandenji Temple Historical center of ascetic practice 西巌殿寺 歴史的な修験道の拠点

Official explanation

Saigandenji Temple, with around 1,300 years of history, is one of the oldest temples in Kyushu. It is said to have been founded by a monk from India named Saiei in 726. The modest structure now in place dates from August 2022. It replaced a somewhat larger 1890 structure that was badly damaged in the Kumamoto earthquakes and accompanying eruptions of Mt. Aso in 2016.

The temple has been battered not only by natural disasters, but also by the tides of human history. For many centuries, it was a center of volcano worship (kazan shinko), a place of pilgrimage for courting couples, and the focus of a sprawling complex of almost 100 rustic temples and huts occupied by mountain ascetics. At the start of the Meiji era (1868–1912), Japan’s new nationalist government sought to forcibly separate Buddhism and Shinto, treating Buddhism as an unwelcome foreign import despite the close association of the two traditions for centuries. Saigandenji Temple, which worshipped both the Eleven-faced Kannon, a Buddhist bodhisattva, and Takeiwatatsu no Mikoto, the Shinto deity of the volcano, was shut down and its monks were dispersed. Saigandenji was moved off the mountain and down to modern-day Aso City in 1871. However, after the anti-Buddhist fervor of the Meiji era gradually lost momentum, the mountaintop temple was rebuilt in 1890 to serve the many pilgrims who still wished to worship there.

出典: 地域観光資源の多言語解説文データベース（観光庁） — www.mlit.go.jp/tagengo-db. この英語解説文は観光庁の地域観光資源の多言語解説整備支援事業で作成しました。
Source: Japan Tourism Agency, Multilingual Explanation Database. This English text was produced by the Japan Tourism Agency's multilingual explanation project and is shown unedited. Opening hours and services may have changed since it was written.